Communicating With the Demented

I posted my concerns about the comments and WUWT, and here is one of the responses:

hunter said on Bizarre: NYT follows AAAS lead on "FOIA requests equate to death threats"
June 30, 2011 at 4:21 am

David Appell,
What death threats?
Show us any actual death threats.
Your side is lying about this like everything else.

How can a person possibly communicate with such a person, let alone reason with them? How can one even try to imagine where such a person is coming from?

The discussion surrounding this subject is passing into absurdity.

The Climate Science Rap

I missed this when it came out, but it's pretty good (and it would have been easy to do this poorly). Kudos.

Where are the Condemnations of the Death Threats?

WUWT has a post about today's AAAS Board of Directors statement on harassment and death threats against climate scientists.... What's stunning is to read the post, and especially the comments, and see essentially no condemnation of the death threats. Instead there are excuses and accusations (always anonymous, of course) that they are "political stunts" or that scientists are "playing the victim." I have yet to see even one comment concerned about them.

Needless to say, regardless of your position on climate science or FOIAs or anything else, threats against individuals are never, ever acceptable. Imagine receiving just one such email, let alone several or on a regular basis. I hope those found to be making such threats are prosecuted to the fullest extent before something deeply tragic happens, which is the path all of this is on. If skeptics are to retain any legitimacy whatsoever, such tactics need to be clearly and loudly denounced, and that's not happening.

The Rape of James Delingpole

In Peter Sinclair's latest video, James Delingpole is left speechless when asked a simple question about expert opinion, then tries to change the subject -- then later actually claims he was "intellectually raped." I wouldn't even call it a dirty look.... Such a sensitive boy:

The Paper Known as "Aad, et al"

If you're going to be an experimental high-energy physicist, you couldn't pick a much better name than "Aad."

Willie Soon received $1m from oil companies

Climate skeptic Willie Soon has received a million dollars from oil companies in the last decade!

http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2011/jun/28/climate-change-sceptic-willie-soon

For Gays But Against Gay Marriage?

Can you be for gays but against same-sex marriage? Here's what New York Archbishop Timothy M Dolan, who strongly opposed the same-sex marriage legislation just passed in New York, said today:

I tell the gay community I love you very much, and every single morning when I say my morning prayers, I pray for the health of all New Yorkers and they are part of that.

This strikes me as disingenuous, because it's been known viscerally for forever (and proven scientifically) that a good marriage is quite advantageous to good health. You can't be for someone, let alone claim to "love them very much," while being against the very things that are most likely to bring them love, more happiness and better health.

Dolan is badly fooling himself. I'm glad a majority of New York state decided not to be fooled with him.

Here's the most amazing thing I've read regarding this issue: This year 58% of residents of New York were found to support same-sex marriage. Four years ago the number was 43%.

Who's Who on U.S. Debt

Some numbers to put the US debt in perspective, if you're going to hold presidents solely accountable for it:

If you assume that a president isn't responsible for the first year of debt under his administration, but is responsible for the first year following his administration, then total debt under Bush was up 108%. For Obama, so far, up 16%. Or,

For Bush, up 14 percentage points per year.
For Obama, up 11 percentage points per year.

Finally: Increase in total debt in the last 3 months: only $135B.

Numbers from US Dept of Treasury.

The Trifid Nebula

The Trifid Nebula, 7000 light-years from Earth in the constellation Sagittarius, formed from the collision of two dust and gas clouds about one million years ago:



Via: Science magazine

Capitalism Compels Us to Be Greedy

Eugene McCarraher in The Nation:

"However lissome its face or benign its manner, capitalism compels us to be greedy, callous and petty. It takes what the Greeks called pleonexia--an endless hunger for more and more--and transforms it from a tawdry and dangerous vice into the central virtue of the system. The sanctity of “growth” in capitalist culture stems from this moral alchemy, as does the elevation of market competition into a model of human affairs.

"The truth is that people matter more than money. While most everyone would agree with that statement, few of us direct our lives guided by the principle.

"Conscripting us into an economic war, capitalism turns us into soldiers of fortune, steeled against casualties and collateral damage, ransacking the earth to fill the shelves and banks with plunder. Capitalism stands condemned most profoundly not by its maldistribution of wealth or its ecological despoliation but by its systematic cultivation of people inclined toward injustice and predation. And I think we on the left need to start dismissing as utterly irrelevant the standard apologetic riposte: the material prosperity and technological achievement generated by capitalist enterprise. No amount of goods can compensate for the damage wrought on human nature by the deliberate nurturance of our vilest qualities. The desecration of the values we claim to hold most dear is the primary reason we should want to abolish, not reinvent, capitalism."

On Expanded Freedom in NY State

A commenter to NRO's Kathrine Lopez's hyperventilation on last night's vote in NY state legalizing same-sex marriage:

In fact, like people in the other 5 states where there's marriage equality, there will no change whatsoever for heterosexuals who wish to marry or are already married. Unless of course your own marriage is so precarious that it's altered by what people who have nothing to do with you choose to do. Straight people will be just as able to abandon cancer stricken wives for younger women like Newt Gingrich, hire prostitutes and write for NRO like David Vitter or exchange questionable tweets like Anthony Weiner.

Happy 20th Anniversary to Gold Systems

Me, Terry, Jim, and Kevin Obenchain

Twenty years ago I was the third employee and part-owner in a startup company named Gold Systems, in Boulder, Colorado. Terry Gold, who I worked with when I was a project manager at AT&T, and Jim Fudge founded it, and some months later I moved to Boulder to join them. It was just three of us in three rooms trying to figure out how to generate income, and we had a lot of fun too. I spent most of the year designing and writing the software for a voice mail system, with a timeout many afternoons for juggling sessions on the grass outside the office, hoping for the phone to ring. Then I went to Arkansas to install the hardware and get the system running. I learned I wasn't very good with hardware, and also found my interest in writing growing. I left the company after a year, and started on a very crooked path to becoming a science writer. But I still have some shares in the company and remember my time there fondly.

Gold Systems just celebrated their 20th Anniversary. They now have several dozen employees building voice and text communications systems. Terry Gold, their CEO, is a great guy who wanted to make a company that did things the right way, and that truly respected its employees and its customers. And he has. I'm very glad his dream came true--he's worked really hard for it--and hope they continue on their successful path. While having more fun along the way.

Bruins' Bar Bill: $156,000

Here's the tab for the Boston Bruins weekend fling after they won the Stanley Cup. They thoughtfully included a 19% tip:

Robert Reich on What's Wrong With Our Economy

In 2.25 minutes:



Via: Huffington Post

Why Eddington Refused to Fight

The British astronomer Arthur Eddington was a Quaker, and he refused to fight in World War I. This is from his application for exemption from military service:

My objection to war is based on religious grounds. I cannot believe that God is calling me to go out to slaughter men, many of whom are animated by the same motives of patriotism and supposed religious duty that have sent my countrymen into the field. To assert that it is our religious duty to cast off the moral progress of centuries and take part in the passions and barbarity of war is to contradict my whole conception of what the Christian religion means. Even if the abstention of conscientious objectors were to make the difference between victory and defeat, we cannot truly benefit the nation by wilful disobedience to the divine will.

From The Life of Arthur Stanley Eddington by A. Vibert Douglas (1956), p. 93.

The 196 Problem

Here's a weird but interesting problem I just learned about: the 196 problem.

Its about what are called "Lychrel numbers" -- numbers which do not form palindromes when their digits are added iteratively.

It's easiest to show some examples. Consider the number 23. Reverse its digits (to get 32) and add these two numbers: 23 + 32 = 55. "55" is palindromic -- it reads back-to-front the same as front-to-back -- so 23 is not a Lychrel number.

How about 431? 431 + 134 = 565, a palindrome.

Or 59: 59 + 95 = 154. 154 + 451 = 605. 605 + 506 = 1111, a palindrome (after 3 iterations).

10,911 reaches the palindrome 4668731596684224866951378664 after 55 steps.

Question: What numbers are Lychrel numbers?

Answer: No one knows. 196 is suspected to be the lowest possible Lychrel number, but there is no proof.

196 has been iterated to a number with 300 million digits without reaching a palindrome.

But here's an even stranger thing about 196: it's been proven to be a Lychrel number in all bases between 2 and 18 (inclusive) except base 10. Weird. Why would 10 be special?

--
UPDATE: 196 is not a Lychrel number in base 19: 196 base 19 = A6; A6+6A base 19 = GG, a palindrome.

Or in base 20: 196 base 20 = 9G; 9G+G9 base 20 = 44, a palindrome.

(Sigh)

James Carroll in the Boston Globe:

In recent months, catastrophic weather events have dominated headlines as rarely before — earthquakes and tsunami in Asia; volcanic cloud in Europe; massive ice melts at the poles; tornadoes, floods, and fires in America. “Records are not just broken,” an atmospheric scientist said last week, “they are smashed.” Without getting into questions of causality, and without anthropomorphizing nature, we can still take these events as nature’s cri de coeur — as the degraded environment’s grabbing of human lapels to say, “Pay attention!”

I guess these kinds of statements are well meaning, but they really don't help.

Warming Since 1995 Now Significant

The other day Phil Jones said that, based on the most recent data, warming since 1995 is now statistically significant.

Of course, Jones' earlier remark was always misinterpreted by skeptics, and the Daily Mail completely botched it (probably on purpose) with this headline. Jones never said there was no global warming since 1995 -- he said there was no statistically significant warming since 1995 if you take 95% as the measure of statistical significance. There's nothing magical about 95%, and the warming trend was significant at the 90% level. That's high enough that I doubt anyone would place a bet against it. In any case 15 or 16 years is too short of a time scale to be making conclusions about climate anyway.

Hopefully this will now be put to rest (though I doubt it).

Quote of the Week

“Do you really need a sermon on why settling questions about the fundamental laws of nature are worth pursuing?”

-- Steven Weinberg, when asked about the importance of studying the acceleration of the expansion of the Universe in a time of (as the reporter later wrote) "high unemployment, crazy gas prices and water shortages."

The Latest IPCC Kerfuffle

So what is the big deal if someone from Greenpeace was a Lead Author on the IPCC report on renewable energy?

Experts can be found in many organizations. As a Greenpeace spokesperson points out, the report also includes an author who is from Chevron as well as researcher from Exxon.

I highly suspect that Mark Lynas is wrong to write that Greenpeace "dictated" the report. I've heard many people talk about their experience working on an IPCC report and no one seems to dictate anything -- every sentence is gone over with a fine-tooth comb and endlessly hashed out. Unless someone has some good evidence that Sven Teske had some special influence in constructing the report (and nothing Lynas offers indicates that), this is once again a vastly overblown issue.

This is hardly the equivalent of a Dick Cheney-like situation huddling with oil industry representatives to divide up the Iraqi oil fields.

As Andrew Revkin writes, the IPCC should have been more transparent in their press release. But they should take expertise where they find it, and nothing says Greenpeace or any NGO can't have that. In fact, I've met more than one person from NGOs who knew as much about an issue and had done as much detailed research into it than so-called experts.